


Tinsel

by SmokySky



Series: Tommy Shelby's 12 Days Of Christmas [3]
Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: (sort of but not really), Advent Calendar, Advent Calendar Drabble, Alternate Universe - Teenagers, Christmas Decorations, Christmas Tree, Crushes, F/M, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Unrequited Crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-09
Updated: 2019-12-09
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:22:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21673630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SmokySky/pseuds/SmokySky
Summary: 12 Days of Christmas Advent Calendar fic based on the prompt: Decorating A Christmas Tree/Hanging Christmas Decorations.In which Tommy and Mabel decorate the living room in Watery Lane, and Tommy has to deal with his brothers' extreme unhelpfulness and desire to embarrass him.
Relationships: Tommy Shelby/Original Female Character(s)
Series: Tommy Shelby's 12 Days Of Christmas [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1559590
Comments: 3
Kudos: 28





	Tinsel

**Author's Note:**

> Well, this is a lot later than I intended, but even if it's a little (very) late here's the third drabble. Again, just in case this anyone isn't reading this series in order, I'm attempting to write 12 short fics for the 12 days of Christmas, with 12 Christmas-y themes. All the stories will be focused on the same characters, and set roughly in chronological order, but there's real overarching plot-line here, they're just little drabbles written for fun.
> 
> Mabel comes round to help Ada and Polly decorate the house for Christmas, and ropes Tommy into helping, all while he tries to deal with John and Arthur's apparent need to ruin his relationship with Mabel...

Tommy stood in the doorway of the house, frozen in horror.

The living room had been transformed, from it’s usually comfortable state, into a gaudy Christmas nightmare. Somehow the evil that had invaded the house had brought a pine tree in with it, along with red and white candles candles, garlands of tinsel, baubles, and a box of dried fruit to be strung on a garland.

And now that evil was beaming at him, silently trying to lure him deeper into the house.

“Tommy! Shut that bloody door, your letting the heat out!”

_ Maybe lure was the wrong word for what Polly was doing _ ...Tommy mused... _ but Mabel is definitely evil _ .

And given the smirk on his best friend’s face, she bloody well knew it as well.

On one hand, Tommy was happy to see Mabel in the house, putting up Christmas decorations with Polly and Ada. Last Christmas had been...difficult, with his mother passing away in late October, no-one had much felt like decorating the house, and part of Tommy had been dreading ever putting them up again: since it had always been his mum that had decided when the house was to be decorated. Whether it had been Mabel, or Polly, or even Ada or Finn, Tommy was glad to have been left out of the decision to start decorating. But on the other hand...Mabel never did anything by half. If she was helping with the decorating, that meant she had Ideas, and with Polly liking the girl as much as she did, his aunt would likely give her free reign.

That alone was a good enough reason for Tommy to be very, very afraid. He had half a mind to just turn around and run without saying a word…but he didn’t. He couldn’t, really, not when Mabel was so obviously happy being surrounded by the Christmas nightmare of her creation.

So he didn’t run: he shut the door behind him, toed off his snow-covered shoes, and crossed the room to take the candle Mabel was holding out to him.

“Thank you, Tommy. I can’t reach the top branches, even standing on a chair.”

Tommy knew she was lying - but he didn’t call her on it, knowing she was only trying to get him involved for his own good: “Happy to help.”

He heard Polly snort with amusement, but he ignored it to focus on spacing out candles amongst the tree’s branches, checking with Mabel that she was happy with where he was putting them.

If anyone asked, he’d claim it was because he didn’t give a shit where they went, but deep down he knew it was more about wanting to make her happy.

Mabel loved Christmas; it was her favourite time of the year, even though, like Tommy, she had lost her mother around this time of year. Her father and brothers couldn’t bear having their house decorated anymore, so Mabel would only get to decorate one house this year, despite how much she adored it: and Tommy wanted to make sure it was perfect for her. Polly could raise her eyebrows and Ada could giggle ‘secretively’ all they wanted - Tommy didn’t give a shit. He just wanted Mabel to enjoy Christmas. And if that meant standing on a chair to decorate the tree, than that meant standing on a chair to decorate the tree.

Besides...it wasn’t as if the tree didn’t look good, lit up with the little white candles Mabel had passed up to him, with their flickering gold light. It was just that Mabel looked better.

She’d really grown up over the last two years - these days Tommy, Arthur and John were having to chase away the boys. As far as John was concerned, Mabel was the older sister he’d never had, and Arthur was always up for a fight, and as far as Tommy was concerned...well, that was a little more complicated. He didn’t want other boys chasing after Mabel; she was  _ far _ too good for them. They just didn’t deserve her.

John and Arthur knew that was how Tommy felt...and they never hesitated to hold it over his head whenever they found Tommy and Mabel together, even though Mabel had no idea about Tommy felt about her. Which meant Tommy was horrified when John and Arthur walked through the door.

“What the fuck is all this?” John asked, looking round the living room in horror.

“Language, John!” Mabel snapped, throwing a length of tinsel at him: “And could you put that up over the curtain rail please.”

John grumbled, but moved towards the curtains anyway: “Isn’t having one Shelby brother doing your bidding for this bullshit enough?”

Arthur laughed: “Ah, but Tommy doesn’t just run around after Mabel at Christmas, does he?”

Tommy blushed, but it appeared Mabel was paying no attention to what Arthur was saying: “Arthur, help Ada with stringing those berries together for the tree. Do try to avoid pricking yourself again.”

“Not me that’s worried about pricking…” Arthur complained under his breath, but like John he did as he was told.

Aunt Pol was watching Mabel a shrewd look, but she didn’t say anything when she slipped out of the room - probably to check on Finn. Tommy knew she wasn’t completely certain about Mabel yet; thought she might be a posh girl slumming it with the Shelbys, but that didn’t mean that Polly didn’t like Mabel. Especially because Mabel was a lot like Aunt Pol, in Tommy’s opinion, in the sense that neither of them took any ‘nonsense’, or listened to people they didn’t think were worth listening to.

Plus, both of them liked to boss people around.

Which was probably why Mabel was now giving John more tinsel to hang before he tried to slip away, sending him out to the kitchen to put it up in there. Arthur made a comment about _someone_ _getting_ something up, but Mabel just glared at him and told him not to be so crude: the no-nonsense part of her nature not at all interested in why Arthur would say something like that. Thankfully.

Tommy didn’t know what he would do if Mabel found out he  _ liked her  _ liked her. Life in Small Heath was...grey, and dull, and miserable, and life in Small Heath without Mabel would be a hundred times more so.

So as much as Arthur and John told him that he should believe in himself and tell Mabel how he felt, or how often they tried to force the issue through snide remarks, Tommy was determined to keep his mouth shut and preserve his friendship with his best friend. And in this instance it meant focusing on finishing decorating the living room of his house. And he’d smile while doing it, because it made Mabel smile.

And she was smiling when, an hour later, Mabel took a look around the living room - she was absolutely beaming with pride: “Oh, it looks beautiful...”

“We did good.” Ada agreed, before turning a glare on John: “No thanks to  _ some people _ .”

“I almost broke my bloody neck hanging that tinsel in the kitchen!” John snapped.

“Well, if you didn’t break the chair by banging it against the wall...” Tommy mocked, smirking at John’s irritated face.

“Just ‘cos you’d rather bang - ”

“Oi! It’s all fucking Christmas-y in here,” Mabel snapped: “And Jesus wasn’t born to save us from our sins so you lot could fucking argue about John being an idiot breaking chairs!”

“Well said, Mabel!” Arthur slapped Mabel on the back, hard enough to knock her into Tommy: forcing him to wrap an arm around her before she fell on her arse: “Instead, he died so we could eat gingerbread while looking at the Christmas tree we worked so hard on like we do every year.”

The girls raised their eyebrows at ‘we’...but then Polly shouted at them to go into the kitchen and get some of the gingerbread she’d just finished baking, and Arthur’s words were forgotten in the mad rush to go and grab the best bits of the freshly baked biscuit.

And if Tommy pulled Arthur back, and stuck his leg out to make John stumble, well...there was no-one around to prove that he did it. Even if there was, it wasn’t like the girls were going to complain about beating the two bottomless pits into the kitchen - if anything, it would’ve made Mabel more inclined to share her treat. As it was, she shared anyway, and Tommy smirked smugly at his brothers as they watched him eat it. Because that was what they got for trying to embarrass him in front of Mabel.

Christmas was off to a good start this year. 

**Author's Note:**

> Did you know that originally tinsel _(a topic of debate in my house around this time of year)_ was actually made of real silver? It was invented in Germany - the inventors of all fun Christmas things - in the early 1600's, and was made from scraps of silver beaten into thin sheets and cut into small strips to be made into a garland. They only changed it because silver tarnishes when exposed to candles: changing it to tin, aluminium, and lead, and then eventually whatever the hell tinsel is made out of today.
> 
> The more you know!


End file.
